Do Windows versions matter when doing browser testing?

I'm testing IE7, IE8, Safari开发者_如何学编程, Chrome and Firefox.

It would be pretty less boring if you guys told me that I don't need to test for XP, Vista and 7, since there's no difference.

Thanks

There are some differences to do with security, in particular what varieties of Windows authentication (NTLM and Kerberos over HTTP) are acceptable.

Also of course each Windows version has a different theme, which will affect what form elements look like and may trip you up if you were relying on the same pixel size of a scrollbar or something like that (a bad thing to do anyway).

Other than that, no, they're pretty much the same.

There are no differences in the same Browser Version run on different Windows OS. So if you test your site in IE* on Windows Vista, it should work in XP and 7, too. And also the other ways around. But I would use at least Windows Vista, because the IE9 is coming soon, and it won't run on XP.

I would also test on the different operating systems due to the way fonts may render as your layout could be impacted. Here's a site with a reference of some differences.

http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/res_fonts.htm

Functionality will likely not be impacted, but if you are going to have users that have those versions of the operating system you need to test on them.